E-MU ESI-4000

some of the menus are KIND OF hard to access, but its easy to remember once you get there and do it more.

If you only knew its capabilities, you would definately agree this machine is a 10. this Boosts any keyboard into a dream machine.

EXCELLENT. Since the XP-50 Has (to my knowledge) actually Patented the AFTERTOUCH FEATURE, they at emu know that it would be crucial to use that compatability as a feature of the system. AND IT DID SO!

Reliable in Home Studio conditions. the best

Im not sure of this yet.... NO PROBLEMS!!

I have a Roland XP-5O, hooked up to my E-MU ESI-4000 DIGITAL SAMPLER, and not only does it make my XP-50 better than it already is, Im asuming that since it has its own sounds, one could use any synth such as the XP-50 to make this one of the most effective (if not the most effective) and useful pieces of musical equipment out there (to a certain extent). I have all of this going into a Roland VS-1680 as the main board. an EXCELLENT Combination for home studio rewcording. and a MK series DAT Machine, by Tascam.

Software version: 3.01
The included 150 MB 'ESI-32 Production Soundset' has lots of useful sounds from all areas, but it doesn't use the ESI-4000 new filters, only the ESI32 compatible one.
I think editing arranging samples into presets is quite complex and I didn't explore the possibilities to their full extent. Most of the time I load premanufactured presets and tweak the filters and envelopes, which is easy.
A patch editor on a PC an not be used, because the ESI-4000's presets can't be controlled via sysex.
Though I'm used to PC based sound editors like Creative Lab's Vienna, I'm happy with the internal editing capabilities and dont't miss a PC. The ten trigger buttons which can be used as shortcuts in the menu structure make navigation fast, and I doubt that one would be faster with the mouse.
The sample editing is without graphical wave form display, but I almost never do sample editing. I tried out the basic functions like auto-truncate and loop and I must say this works better than on an MPC2000, which has a graphical display, but no auto-truncate.
Looping can also be done efficiently without a graphical display, because it goes almost automatically and yields better results than one can achieve (in reasonable time) on the MPC2000 manually.
The manual is ok, its about 250 pages, with a guided tour and a reference section. Several tips are included as well as general explaination about filters etc.

I'll keep the features short, check them out at www.emu.com.
The ESI-4000 has 2 analogue in, 4 analogue out, 64 voices, 16 programs at once in multi-mode, the best readable LC display ever, a useless floppy drive, 2 megs standard, up to 128 megs using 72pin SIMMs. The value entry 'thumb wheel' of the ESI is the entry device I wished to have instead of the fingertip moulded data wheels on other gear.
I will not buy the optional effects board, because the routing capabilities are not state of the art.
The realtime MIDI modulation possibilities are limited to the major sources and targets, such as filter cutoff, lfo rate/depth, crossfade, attack rate and some more. This is what I expected and there is nothing I'd really miss.
The midi out is only useful for MIDI sample dump.
Sample dump via SCSI works fine with Soundforge. I had no problems hooking the ESI on to the SCSI chain I already had, a Jaz, an OPTICS CD-Rom and an MPC2000. Sometimes the MPC2000 locks the SCSI bus and when the ESI then tries to access a SCSI device, it locks up and needs to be turned off and on.

The pure sound quality without filters etc. of the ESI-4000 is state of the art, like a DAT or so, there is just a very slight variation in the color of the original and sampled sound.
The ESI 18 or so different filter algorithms, some of which are useful. The 2-pole lowpass is somewhat like that of the Akai 12db filter, but hm, I think the Akai 12db filter's warmth is not reached by the ESI or the Akai filter is just easier to control, I'm not sure. The 'swept-eq' filters are those I like best, then the 2-pole lowpass and the highpass filters.
The filter can have it's own envelope.
The rest of 'synthesizer' section is limited: one VCA envelope, one auxiliary envelope, one LFO. For me, this is ok.

I bought the ESI-4000 after realizing that the sampler section of the MPC2000 was not usable for playing full-scale sounds or for importing programs from sampling CDs and had no multi-mode.
The ESI-4000 has this all and complements the MPC2000 well, as I expected it to do.
Currently (Nov '97), I would buy it again, because it serves my needs best for the money. The S2000 has an ugly display, less memory, fewer voices, only one filter type, doesn't work with Soundforge. The A3000 is more expensive and has no multimode, the ESI32 has only one (not so good) filter algorithm and everything else is too expensive.
What I especially like about the ESI-4000 is + easy output assignment in multi-mode + very readable LC display + the handy 'thumb wheel' data entry + the excellent time stretching algorithm + the ability to import sounds *and* programs from other models and Akai
I don't like - that the useless floppy can't at least be used to import *.wav or *.aif - that the digital tools are quite slow
After all, I can make music with the ESI-4000, just put in some good sampling CD and go, stacking more and more instruments in multi mode without having to worry about lack of voices.